


and the sun shines rings around your smile

by samyazaz



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Blacksmithing, F/M, Getting Together, Inspired by A Knight's Tale (2001), Jousting, M/M, Multi, Royalty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-30
Updated: 2018-09-30
Packaged: 2019-07-20 11:59:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,622
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16136786
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/samyazaz/pseuds/samyazaz
Summary: The nobleman stands just outside her workshop, and with the sun coming in from behind him and her eyes still aching from the brightness of the forge, Musichetta can't make out more than the shape of him. "I can make anything you want." Her chin lifts a little with pride at the words, because they're true. "What sort of armor are you looking for?"He steps off the street and inside where she can see the set of his shoulders and the cut of his clothes, and his face, the face that every person in the city knows, and it's all she can do not to let her jaw drop and gape at Prince Legles, standing right there before her as he says, "Something sturdy. Nothing too ornate."Nothing too ornatesays the crown prince of the realm, and Musichetta wants to bury her face in her hands and laugh.





	and the sun shines rings around your smile

Musichetta's stoking up the forge when she hears footsteps pause outside her workshop, hears them pause and then linger, instead of continuing on their way. "Can I help you with something?" she calls over the roar of the fire, and straightens to wipe the sweat from her brow with the back of a wrist before it can drip down into her eyes. 

"I beg your pardon," a voice says behind her, and she stands up straighter, sucks in a breath, because she knows the clipped, precise syllables of nobility when she hears them. "Do you work in armor as well, or only horseshoes?"

She turns. The nobleman, whoever he is, stands just beyond her workshop like a gentleman come courting at some lady's door, and with the sun coming in from behind him and her eyes still aching from the brightness of the forge, Musichetta can't make out more than a shape, an outline. "I can make anything you want," she tells him, and her chin lifts a little with pride at the words, because they're true. "What sort of armor are you looking for?"

He steps off the street and into her workshop, and she can see him better now, can see the set of his shoulders and the cut of his clothes, and his face, the face that every person in the city knows, and it's all she can do not to let her jaw drop and gape at Prince Legles, standing right there before her in her humble workshop, smiling at her -- smiling at _her_ \-- as he says, "Something sturdy. Nothing too ornate."

_Nothing too ornate_ says the crown prince of the realm, and Musichetta wants to sink down onto a stool and bury her face in her hands and laugh. 

"Begging your pardon, your Highness," she starts, but he cuts her off with a pained grimace.

"Oh, please, don't do that. Please don't."

She hesitates, and then tries again. "Begging your pardon, sir--" And he laughs and passes a hand over his eyes, and comes in a little deeper into her workshop.

"Legles, please. Just Legles."

She is absolutely not going to do that. But she tightens her jaw and tries a third time, says, "You must have a dozen suits of armor to your name already, don't you? And surely you'd have any master craftsman in the city clamoring to make you another, if you wished one."

Legles sighs and sits on the nearest available surface, and Musichetta wants to squawk and swat at him until he gets up and she can clean it properly, because surely it's covered in soot and scale, and she's going to be responsible for his fine clothes being ruined. "Yes," he says, and he sounds wry, he sounds rueful. "Any master craftsman in the city would beggar themselves for the opportunity to craft a suit of armor for the crown prince, and I'm sure it would be very lovely and very fine, but I don't want armor made for the prince."

She crosses her arms and considers him, and probably she shouldn't frown so at the _crown prince of the realm_ , but if he didn't want to be frowned at then he shouldn't talk at her in riddles. "Then what do you want?"

"Something sturdy," he says again. "Something functional. Something that won't be destroyed if it takes a blow from a lance."

And, all at once, she thinks she understands. She stares at him, breathless with the realization. "You want to joust," she says, and she doesn't mean it to come out as an accusation, but he flinches all the same.

"If I wanted to sit on a horse and trot it around a bit while other knights refused to engage me," he says, "I could do that anywhere, I don't need a tournament for that. I want a _joust_ , a real joust, not an endless parade of knights forfeiting to me because they don't want to ride against their prince."

"They don't want to be the one to hurt or kill their prince," Musichetta points out. She fills her lungs and squares her shoulders, faces him head-on with her feet planted wide. "You're asking me to aid you in this. You want armor you won't be recognized in, armor not so fine that anyone will suspect there's a prince inside it. I'd be lucky to only find myself in the stocks, if something happened to you and they found out I was a party to it."

He lifts a brow at her, says pointedly, "I'm asking you to take a commission from your prince. It's not your responsibility what I do with it, once it's been made."

That makes her frown, makes her cross her arms over her chest and fix him with a look. Absurdly -- infuriatingly -- he beams at it, when anyone else she fixed it on would quail, and a prince -- a prince ought to be made of sterner stuff than to be moved by a disapproving look from a humble blacksmith.

"Are you my prince," she demands of him, "or are you a knight commissioning a set of armor for a tourney, Just Legles? I'll need to know who I'm working for."

The broad, beaming smile that splits his face makes him look young and joyous and boyish. It's a good look on him. "You'll do it, then?"

She sighs and scrubs her hands through her hair, and doesn't give herself a chance to wonder what on earth she's doing, just moves over to her workbench and sweeps it clear so she can spread a roll of parchment out across it. She takes up a pen and uses the inkwell to weight one corner of it, and starts sketching out the basic shape of a cuirass. "You'll pay half up front and the rest on delivery, like any other knight," she tells him over her shoulder. "And I'll need you here at least twice for fittings."

He rises from where he's been sitting and comes over to join her at the workbench, leans his elbows on its edge and gestures to her sketching. "I was thinking, for the pauldrons--" He reaches like he means to take the pen from her hand, but then hesitates and glances at her, a genuine question in his eyes. "May I?"

She hands it over and watches as he begins to sketch out a shape, and together they set to designing a suit of armor fit for a prince to hide in.

*

The next time Lesgles comes to her workshop, she's already busy with Joly, crouched down before him while he sits on a box so she can measure him for the next iteration of a brace they've been designing together to help support his leg. She's distantly aware of footsteps, pausing and then approaching, but mostly she's preoccupied with trying to convince Joly to keep still long enough for her to take the notes she needs. He's the sort who gestures expansively when he talks, animated and bright, and his gestures encompass his whole body when they're given half a chance. He's a joy to speak with and a delight to watch, but when it comes to taking his measurements or testing the fit of their devices, she feels rather like she's trying to wrangle an eel. It takes her full concentration, so she only calls over her shoulder, "I'll be with you in a moment," and then clucks her tongue at Joly and takes advantage of a brief moment of stillness to take and note down the last measurement she needs.

Joly, uncharacteristically, does not spring into motion again the moment she sits back on her haunches, and that makes her look up at him, frowning. His gaze is angled past her and over her head, his eyes wide and blinking, his mouth pursed into a surprised 'o'. "Musichetta, my love," he says. "You owe me at least a dozen explanations, I think."

She twists, looking over her shoulder to see what's caught his attention, and finds Lesgles there standing just inside her workshop, looking a little abashed at her and more than a little wary of Joly. 

"You're early," she says, straightening and dusting her hands off. "I wasn't expecting you for another quarter hour."

"I didn't want to keep you waiting." His gaze slides sidelong to Joly and turns pained. "Please, don't."

Joly's brows climb high. "I haven't done anything. Don't what?"

"Don't...say it," Lesgles says, and he sounds plaintive, as close to begging as Musichetta thinks a prince could ever come. 

He means, she thinks, calling him _your Highness_ , as he must have assumed Joly was about to do. But Joly's clever, always has been, and so he considers Lesgles in silence a moment and then asks, "What should I say instead, then?" and waits expectantly for a response. 

"Bossuet," Lesgles says, too quickly, like this much at least he'd already thought through ahead of time. "Call me Bossuet."

As false names go, it's decidedly terrible. "How many people do you expect to fool with that wordplay?" Musichetta asks him, honestly curious.

Instead of answering, he crosses over to her workbench and picks up the helm from where she's laid it out, with the rest of his armor. Things are still rough, waiting for the final shaping until he's here and she can fit them to him in person, but he looks it over, turning it around in his hands, and then looks up at her and smiles broadly. "With this to cover my face? No one will think twice about a humble country knight come to try himself in a tourney. I don't need any more than that. It's beautiful work, truly."

It _is_ beautiful -- not ornate, just as he'd asked, but she'd done her best work all the same, and it's just like a prince to look at a smith's best work and think it'll be taken for a humble country knight's, just because it's not covered in gold filligree and fancy engraving. He'll look like a nobleman, but there's no avoiding that. Dress him in rags and he'd still have the bearing of one, he'd still speak like one. Anyone who sees him at the tourney will wonder who he is and why they've never heard of him, but, well -- he's the one who said it's only her job to take his commission, and whatever happens after she's handed the armor over to him and received her payment is none of her business, is it?

Joly hops down off the box, grabs his cane from where they left it leaning beside him, and makes his way smoothly over toward Legles. "You're entering the tourney?" he asks, his voice climbing just as high as his eyebrows.

Legles' mouth presses flat for just a moment. "I'm _good_ at it, you know," he says. "Or, you wouldn't know, because no one will ride against me so long as they know I'm...me. But I am. I just want a chance to joust."

By rights, he ought to be staring Joly down, demanding discretion, threatening him with any number of dire consequences if he breathes a word of the prince's secret to anyone but the three of them. But Legles just looks a little sad and a little yearning, and he holds the helm between his hands and looks down at it like it holds a promise for him. And he hasn't thought to be alarmed yet by the fact that Joly's here and has learned what he intends, and could speak two words and ensure that no one will ride against him no matter what armor he wears, so Musichetta decides that if he's not concerned about it she won't be either, and she reaches out to gently take the helm from his hands and lay it back down on the workbench with the rest. "Let's start with the breastplate," she says, and hefts that up into her arms. "I'm not sure I got the depth right. It won't do you any good if you fall of your horse halfway down the field because I didn't make you armor deep enough to breathe in."

Legles doesn't protest, either her taking the helm from his hands or her directing him about, telling him to move there and lift this and stand in just this way. And Joly steps in smoothly where she needs him, helping to support the weight of the cuirass so Legles can stretch his arm out the way she needs him to, jotting down measurements and notes for her as she calls them out, though neither of them have asked him to and he'd be well within his rights to take his leave and absent himself from this foolish endeavor.

But he stays, and when Musichetta has tested every piece on Legles and made notes of what fits and what doesn't, and what needs to be changed in which way, they put the whole suit on him so they can see how it all functions together, and she's glad again to have him there to help her. She's strong, as any smith has to be, but she's not a squire and she doesn't have the practice of putting a knight into his armor. She's glad for the extra set of hands.

When they're done, they both step back and let Legles stand between them, nearly every inch of him covered by his armor so that no one would know, to glance at him, that royalty stood before them. 

Musichetta paces a circle around him, checking that all the important places are covered, that nothing gapes in a way it shouldn't, and then she gestures Joly aside and they clear a space for him, and she says, "Walk, so I can see how it moves, and make sure nothing catches."

Legles walks, pacing up the length of her workshop and back again, and Musichetta is looking at the armor and how all the plates move against one another, so it takes her by surprise when, beside her, Joly gives a sharp crack of laughter.

"You're going to need more than armor and a false name if you intend to fool anyone long enough to tilt at them," he says, tapping the handle of his cane thoughtfully against his chin. "Even in all that, you still move like a prince."

Legles pulls the helm off and tucks it under an arm so he can frown at Joly, more puzzled than unhappy. "I don't know what you mean. I'm just walking."

Joly glances at Musichetta, light dancing in his eyes, and she grins back at him. And this is just supposed to be a commission, she's not supposed to be involved or to care beyond ensuring she's done her best work and then getting paid for it, so she surprises herself but only a little when she says, "No, he's right. You hold yourself like that helm is a crown. It's not your fault, you were bred to it. But we're going to have to teach you how to carry yourself a little more humbly, or no one will believe that you're anything less than a duke."

Legles might bridle, might take insult, might reject out of hand the idea of unlearning all the pomp and dignity that life as a prince has taught to him. But instead, he just smiles, bright as the sun overhead and full of relief and gratitude. "Would you do that? Really?"

Joly shrugs, easily accepting. Musichetta takes a moment longer, then says, "Well, I have to make sure you get a chance to show off my work properly, don't I? It won't bring me any business if you never get a chance to ride down the lists in it." She tips her head towards Joly. "Can you stay a little longer today? We don't have long until the tourney, and we're going to need all the time we can get."

Joly is beaming, just as bright as Legles. "I can stay as long as it takes."

*

By the time Legles leaves, a little further on in the afternoon, they've at least made good strides in showing him how to walk a little more heavily, how to relax his spine and droop his head forward a bit. He has a long way yet to go, and it's going to take more time than they have there in Musichetta's workshop, with her anvil dragged out of the way and all her tools and clutter pushed aside so there's room for the two of them to demonstrate, and room for them to sit and watch with a critical eye as Legles tries to copy them. But he's promised to keep practicing it, between now and his next fitting, and honestly Musichetta would pay the entirety of her commission for a chance to see the prince of the realm striding up and down the palace halls, his face scrunched up with concentration as he tries to walk like someone who grew up in the country.

They see him off, when he pulls a reluctant face and says that he really can't be gone any longer or he'll be missed, and they stand there together leaning against the wall of Musichetta's workshop, watching him walk up the street, trying hard to walk more heavily with each step.

Musichetta glances sidelong at Joly and finds him already looking at her, waiting. And as soon as they catch each other's gazes, he starts to grin, and she starts to giggle, and then she has to drag him back inside the workshop so the prince won't hear their laughter following him, and take it amiss.

*

Legles returns for his final fitting with only a few days left before the tourney, and Joly conspires to be there while she waits for him. She keeps herself busy, testing the fit of the brace that they've designed and she's refined in the time since, and he's standing, testing his weight on it while she holds his cane for him and he hums a thoughtful noise that she knows means he's pleased with it.

"It's not pressing anywhere, is it?" she asks him as he carefully eases his weight onto his bad leg, and off, and on again, trying its limits. "It's not going to rub, when you try to walk?"

"I don't think so. One way to find out." He holds his hand out to her and she passes him his cane, watches with crossed arms and narrow eyes as he walks across her workshop and back to her. It looks like his gait is a little easier, which is what they've been angling for with this brace. That, and to help with his pain, and she thinks his face, when he turns around and makes his way back to her, looks a little less drawn than it usually is when he's been walking as much as she's made him do this past hour. 

He's nearly made it to her when she sees the shape in her doorway, the figure of a man outlined by the light behind him, and by now she doesn't even need to wait for him to come inside enough to see his face before she's grinning.

Joly, coming towards her and so with his back to the door, to Legles, stops walking and tips his head to the side, watching her and her smile curiously. "I don't look _that_ funny, I hope," he says, and she can't help but laugh.

"You look very handsome," she assures him, "and much more at ease."

"I think she was laughing at me," Legles says from the doorway, and Joly spins around. Lesgles comes forward, entering the workshop properly, and Musichetta watches him as they greet one another and Joly shows off his brace to Legles' approving exclamations.

"You _have_ been practicing," she says, her voice warm. "You might only be taken for an earl now, I think."

Legles grins up at her from where he's crouched before Joly, to better appreciate the brace as Joly shows it to him, twisting about so Legles can see it from every angle. "I feel like a horse, clopping through the palace halls the way I have been. It's a wonder no one's asked me what's the matter with me yet. Two days ago I tangled my legs up in one another and went sprawling on my face, and had half the servants in the palace in a fuss over me."

"Well," Musichetta says, trying to hold back her laughter but unable to prevent the way it fills her voice, "do that on the tilting field and no one in the stands will think to question that you come from the country."

Legles grins at her, sharing in the joke in a way she wouldn't have expected from royalty, but probably should have expected from him. "And you," he says, getting to his feet and offering Joly the cane that he'd handed off in his enthusiasm to better point out the finer details of Musichetta's handiwork, "did not exaggerate, it seems, the day we met. You really can make anything a person might want, can't you?" He gestures to Joly as he makes his way back to Musichetta's side, to flop down beside her where she's sitting and swing his legs like an overenthusiastic child. "It's incredible."

Musichetta warms, but tries not to preen. "I always thought, where's the fun in making a hundred horseshoes all day, only to sleep and rise and make a hundred more the next? This is a lot more interesting, even if it's harder work, and doesn't pay half so well."

Joly elbows her at that, which is deserved, because he offered to pay her for her time and her work at the start and she'd refused, and only relented in the end when he'd insisted on at least paying her for the materials she used up in making it. She elbows him right back, and he leans in against her side and hook his chin over her shoulder and chuckles quietly there, where only she can hear him.

Legles, for his part, is watching her with a gaze that she thinks is warmer than the conversation warrants. "I'm very lucky," he says, smiling at her so much and so genuinely that his eyes are all crinkled up with it, "that happenstance led me to your forge, and not somebody else's."

"Yes, well." She dusts her hands off on her leather apron and shifts her weight against Joly's until he straightens, freeing her from his weight so she can get to her feet without sending him toppling. "You'll change your mind about that if we don't stop idling about here and get your fitting done. Come over here where the light's better and we'll play squire to you once more."

Lesgles is generous enough not to laugh as they fumble to dress him in his armor, and is still and cooperative, and doesn't move without being told to until Musichetta finally steps back, walks a circle around him to see how everything fits together, and nods in satisfaction. And then his stance eases, and he moves, bending and stretching and testing out his range of motion. 

"It's the best set of armor I've ever owned," he tells her, and she can't see his face to read his sincerity while he's got his helm on, but he _sounds_ earnest, and she flushes a little at the praise and bends down to fuss with one of the straps so he won't see her color rising.

"It's nothing as nice to look at as what you get to wear when you're yourself," she says, "but it'll do to protect you from an oncoming lance."

"It's my favorite," he says to her, insistent, and she has to turn away and go find Joly and help him take the brace off so she secure a bit of sheepskin around one spot to act as padding, where it looked like it was rubbing against his ankle.

*

He hesitates before leaving, when they're both satisfied with the armor's fit and she's bundled it all up for him, and he's promised to send a servant with a horse to retrieve it, and he's paid her with a purse that feels heavier than it ought to, heavier than the one with the first half of his payment had been, and she's closed her fingers around the strings of the bag and can't quite breathe.

He hesitates, and his gaze seeks her out, and there's a quiet question there that it takes him a moment to voice. "Would it be too bold," he says, his gone soft and a little husky, his eyes uncertain, like he doubts the answer he'll receive, "if I asked you for a favor to ride with on the morrow?"

If he'd asked the first time, or even the second, she thinks she would have laughed, shocked at the suggestion that there might be anything too bold for a prince to ask of a common craftswoman. But he came to her looking for armor to hide his nobility in, he beamed at her when she called him Bossuet, he's smiled more in these three days he's spent in her workshop than she's ever seen him do in any of his public functions, he called the simple armor she made for him his favorite, and she thinks that what he likes, what he _wants_ , is the chance to not be himself for a few hours. So she doesn't mention it, doesn't say that there's hardly anything she could refuse to her prince if he asked it of her, she just thinks a moment and then pulls the leather tie from her hair, lets her curls fall loose about her shoulders and leans in to kiss his cheek as she presses the plain, ragged thing into his palm.

He's not smiling, not quite, when she steps back and puts space between them again, but his face is bright like the sun, and he wraps the leather about his wrist and ties it there before taking his leave of them both.

"Musichetta," Joly says softly, when he's gone from their view.

She spins about and stomps back inside. "I don't know," she says fiercely, to the question he hasn't asked. And then, just as savage, to remind them both, "He's a _prince_ ," and crouches to stoke the fire, and slides a piece of metal into the forge to heat, and takes up her hammer, so she can have the satisfaction of hitting something.

*

Tourneys mean good business for a blacksmith, bringing a constant stream of knights with some bit or other that's been broken and in need of a swift repair, but Musichetta closes her shop and goes instead to the tilting fields, goes early enough to secure a spot for her and Joly both right up at the edge of the rail, where they'll have the best view. 

They watch the first few jousts, clap and cheer appropriately and enjoy the festive atmosphere around them. And then a knight rides up to one end of the field in armor that's painfully familiar, after these weeks that Musichetta has spent working on it, and she grips Joly's arm and points, and raises up a cheer while he gets his lance settled into position. Musichetta's leather strap is tied about its handle now, instead of his wrist, and it's long enough that the ends trail a bit in the breeze.

When he's announced to the crowd as Sir Bossuet the Just, Musichetta buries her face in her hands and laughs and laughs. It's only because Joly nudges her in the side with his elbow that she drops her hands in time to see the riders kick their horses into motion and ride toward one another.

Musichetta holds her breath when they clash together, her fingers tight on Joly's arm. The other knight's lance skitters off of Legles' breastplate, and Musichetta thinks of all the time and sweat and effort she poured into refining the curve of that particular piece, and is abruptly, sickeningly glad for it. 

Legles' lance shatters on the other knight's armor and Musichetta and Joly both cheer the loudest of anyone else there in the stands. On their second pass, Legles' lance shatters again, though the other knight's doesn't strike him, and on the third he connects so well that the blow knocks the other knight clear out of his saddle, and sends him sprawling into the dust.

Legles reins his horse around and then swings down out of the saddle, and Musichetta holds her breath. But he doesn't draw his sword, doesn't finish the bout by securing victory over his opponent while he's still catching his breath on his back in the dirt. He reaches a hand down to the other knight and, when he grasps it after only a moment's hesitation, Legles hauls him up to his feet and then steps back, and gives him as much of a bow as his armor will allow. 

The other knight returns the gesture and they clasp hands, and then return to their horses, and the match is called for Sir Bossuet the Just. 

Joly grips Musichetta's arm where he's holding onto it to help keep himself balanced and to take some of the weight off of his leg, and leans in to murmur into her ear, "He wasn't wrong, was he? He is good at it."

Musichetta can't speak, just claps wildly and nods. 

They watch the next few jousts, watch until it's Legles' turn to ride against his next opponent, watch him defeat them just as thoroughly as he had the first. Musichetta's hair tie is still fixed in place around the base of his lance, and when he rides off the field, Musichetta doesn't have to do anything more than grip Joly's hand and he straightens up, freeing her from his weight and following along with her, smiling at the people around them as they make their excuses and push their way through the crowd, the throng of people around them who are happy enough to push forward into the space they've left and get that little bit closer to the action.

When they break through the back of the crowd, Musichetta pauses just long enough to pull in a few deep breaths of air, free from the warmth and press of people around her. Joly looks to be just as glad to have a bit of elbow room, and when he meets her eye, she nods and they turn together for the cluster of tents where knights participating in the tourney are able to retire between matches.

It's a maze to try to find their way through the walking paths that have been left between tents, clustered with knights and their attendants and the occasional horse being led about by the reins. Musichetta doesn't let go of Joly's hand as they slip through the press of people, and he doesn't let go of hers, and by some miracle no one looks at the two of them and recognizes that this is a place they don't belong, and no one speaks a word of protest, much less tries to stop them.

Eventually, they find a tent with the coat of arms Legles had ridden under hanging from it. The flaps of the tent are hanging shut, but there's sounds coming from within. Musichetta hesitates then, but Joly tightens his grip on her hand, and she knows if she looks at him he'd be giving her an encouraging smile. So she nods once, and coughs a little bit to make her presence known, and calls out quietly, "Just Bossuet, there are those who would wish to congratulate you on your victories, if you've the time to spare for them."

There's the sound of a sharp indrawn breath, and footsteps, and the tentflap is pushed back by a hand and Legles is beaming out at them, half out of his armor and looking sweaty and disheveled, and he darts a cautious glance out even as he smiles so broadly at them, so Musichetta doesn't wait for an invitation, just steps inside so that they can let the tent close behind Joly and preserve Legles' ruse.

"You watched me joust?"

"As though we'd miss it." The interior of the tent is lit by lamps, but it's dim by comparison after the morning they've spent standing under the blazing sun. "You were incredible. When do you ride next?"

The praise makes his face glow brighter, warmer and happier, though she wouldn't have guessed that was possible before she spoke the words. "I have some time. I was just going to eat, while I had the opportunity for it." He gestures, and Musichetta follows the motion and sees a small table that's been set up, and set with steaming bowls and plates of food. 

Musichetta has just a moment to wonder if they're being gently dismissed, when she's aching for the chance to spend a little more time with him, when she has a hundred questions she wants to ask about how the armor's been faring now that he's been putting it through its paces properly, instead of just wearing it about her workshop. But of course he's busy, and they're interrupting, and he'll need to eat while he can between jousts so he has the energy he needs for his next ride, and maybe she'll be able to seek him out once the tourney's over to ask about the armor, maybe she can presume at least that much--

Joly's hand slips into hers and squeezes hard, nearly at the same time as Lesgles says, "Will you care to join me? Both of you?"

"Of course we will," Joly says without waiting for her to answer, and pulls Musichetta with him to the table.

There's only the one chair that's been brought in for the table, and Lesgles relinquishes it to Joly and drags a chest and a crate over for Musichetta and himself to use. The crate is a little too low, and when Lesgles sits on it the table's edge lands halfway up his chest, making him look like an overlarge child as he grins at them both, eyes dancing with the humor of it all, and Musichetta has to cover her mouth with one hand and her eyes with the other and laugh and laugh.

A hand catches hers, drawing it down from her mouth and then twining fingers through hers, and she knows the shape and the weight of Joly's hand in hers intimately, and so knows right away, despite the hand still pressed over her eyes, that this is Lesgles', that Lesgles is holding her hand across a table and inviting her to share a meal with him, and she has to lower her hand from her eyes and look at him because none of this makes any sense at all.

He's just smiling at her, gently, just like he's glad to have her here. With the hand that's not holding hers, he's gingerly trying to dish out food for the three of them, and managing to only spill a little with Joly's help holding the bowls steady. It feels like the world has tipped beneath her to a new angle and nothing looks the way that it should anymore.

It's felt that way since the day he first stood in the door to her workshop.

"Bossuet," she says quietly, testing a thought, and when he glances at her in response he looks a little startled and a lot pleased, and she's sure that she's right. 

She's known it from the start, or could have figured it out if she'd been paying attention. If she'd been less gobsmacked by the sheer presence of him in her workshop, in her life. He'd come to her without any of the trappings of his station, he'd asked Joly to call him Bossuet, he'd brightened like the morning sky every time either one of them had done so. He'd done all but say plainly that he didn't want to be Lesgles, at least not when he was with them. 

And if that were so, if he weren't a prince but were instead just a knight like any other, one she'd spent weeks collaborating on this armor with, who they'd spent countless afternoons working and practicing and laughing with-- If all that were true, she wouldn't be sitting like this with a table between them, holding his hand with her heart racing at the thought of even that much.

It _is_ true, though, all of it but the one, and that one she can't say is wholly untrue, either. So she tightens her hand on his and stands, and comes around the table to him. And while he's looking up at her, his eyes warm and welcoming and a little curious, she slides her free hand along his jaw and bends and kisses him.

His breath is warm, the little startled puff of it that he exhales against her mouth, and somewhere on the other side of the table Joly makes a sharp sound before going abruptly, entirely quiet, though he can't be surprised by any of this, she thinks of the three of them he must be the least surprised between them. And she has more pressing things to consider than what Joly thinks about them kissing over his luncheon, like the way Bossuet's lips curve against hers and the warmth of his hand where it wraps around her arm, holding onto her. Like how he lets himself be urged forward by the pressure of her fingertips at the back of his neck, and how when she parts her lips into their kiss, he matches her, and the sound he makes against her mouth sets off tremors of warmth and delight in the depths of her stomach. 

She could kiss him forever. She doesn't want to stop, now that she's found a way to start. But eventually, when her head is swimming and her breath is sharp, he gentles the kiss and then sets her back, just a little. And when she opens her eyes to look at him, his whole face is shining up at her, bright as gold, happier than she's ever seen him.

"I-- I should let you eat," she says, a little self-conscious but not so much as she might have expected, and she puts half a step of space between them. "You'll need your strength for your next joust, and I'm squandering what time you have."

"I'd hardly call it squandered," he says, his eyes crinkling as he smiles at her. He doesn't stop her, but he does slip his hand back into hers, right where it had been before, and when she moves to return to her seat across the table from him, he tightens his grip and tugs a little, and so she ends up awkwardly shuffling his trunk around the table with only one free hand, so that she can sit beside him instead, her and Joly flanking with Bossuet looking delighted about it in the middle, and she sits and they eat, and she can't look at Joly across the table at all because she knows him too well, and she knows that one glance at him and she'll break. There'll be time for that later, when Bossuet is riding again.

They eat quickly, with little conversation eked out between bites. They can argue about whether it was a waste or not all they like, but the truth of the matter is that she did spend a not-inconsiderable amount of what time he had available to him, and so now they eat, and let him eat, so he'll have the strength he needs for his next match. It feels like hardly any time at all when a squire leans their head in, clears their throat and says, "Begging your pardon, sir, but I'll need to be getting you back in your armor if you're to make it to the field on time."

Musichetta and Joly both rise before he has to say anything. He nods to the squire, says, "Give me just one moment, please," and then looks to them both once the tent flap falls shut again. "Will you wait for me?"

Musichetta hesitates in the act of gathering their plates and bowls and silverware into a tidy stack on the little table. "We can't watch you ride from in here."

He looks hopeful, but torn. "I would like to get to return to you both, if I may."

"We can find our way back as easily as we made our way here in the first place," Joly says, sure and smiling, and that decides it.

While Musichetta finishes straightening up their dishes for whatever servant will come to carry them away to be cleaned, Bossuet draws Joly aside and speaks to him in low tones, a murmur of familiar voices but whose words she can't make out. And she leaves them to it because of course they'll need to talk, they'll one or both of them want reassurances now that she's gone and kissed Bossuet across the table with Joly there watching her do it, and she can allow them that much at least. So she keeps herself busy and gives them the space they need to have their conversation, until the tent flap opens and the squire returns, Musichetta's armor piled in their arms, and she and Joly both take their leave and duck out before Bossuet has to go to the trouble of dismissing them. 

Musichetta doesn't look at Joly as they walk through the tents, back out towards the field, but her face is on fire. At length, when they've left the tents behind them but have yet to rejoin the crowds of spectators, when there's space around them and no one to overhear, he says, "Are you not going to talk to me about this at all?"

She swallows the painful lump in her throat and manages to say, too honest, "I can't. Talk about it, I mean. At all." Her voice trembles, proving her point.

Joly is thoughtful for a moment, the grass whispering beneath their feet as they walk together. "You can't think that I'm angry."

"Of course not," she says at once, and even mostly means it.

"I've been waiting for one of you to do that for a week, at least."

She gives a shock of laughter and shakes her head, not at Joly but at the absurdity of the entire situation. A blacksmith kissing a prince, being kissed by a prince. It's the stuff of children's tales. "He's royal," she says helplessly. Even if he doesn't want to be, even if they'd both rather pretend that he wasn't, it doesn't change the truth of it. And what can either of them do about it? Bossuet hides the truth beneath his armor, but that secret will only carry him so far. And Musichetta isn't noble, will never be noble. He could offer her a title, if he wished to, but she wouldn't take it. She likes her work, and she doesn't know the first thing about how to be a lady. And where does that leave them? 

"Not today, he's not," Joly says, cheerful and undaunted, and hooks his arm through hers as they continue on. "Today he's Just Bossuet, and if either of you had any sense at all, you'd make the most of it."

Musichetta doesn't argue, and doesn't answer. They're at the edges of the crowd now anyway, and what's to be said? They find a place to watch that's not so close as they'd been before, but it's at the edge of a rail so Joly can lean against it and rest his leg, and they can both lean out enough to see the riders decently enough. They make it there moments before Bossuet and his opponent are announced, and Musichetta and Joly both lean out far to try to catch a glimpse of him. As he and the other knight trot past one another, to give their salutes and to give the crowd a chance to appreciate them both, Musichetta's leather strap is still in place where it had been before, but beside it now is a second favor, a strip of colorful cloth knotted fast, its ends trailing in the breeze, and Musichetta sucks in a breath because she knows that fabric.

When she turns to look at Joly, to look for his neckerchief, whose absence she hadn't noted their whole walk here, because she had refused to look at him, he's grinning, his eyes dancing. "I _told_ you I wasn't angry," he says, and Musichetta tips her head back and laughs up at the brilliant blue sky above them.

*

"What will you do when they declare the winners?" Musichetta asks quietly from where she's sitting cross-legged on the carpet that makes the floor of Bossuet's tent, helping him rub oil into the pieces of his disassembled armor, to clean the dirt of the fields off of it. No one needs to wait for it to be made official, to know that Bossuet the Just won the jousting. He beat every opponent he rode against, and soundly. "Accept your prize with your helm in place? People will talk, if you do, but you're going to be all anyone in the city talks about anyway, there's no avoiding that, not when you've come in as a country knight and bested everyone in the tourney."

Bossuet hums, noncommittal, and leans his weight into scrubbing at a stubborn spot of dirt on one of his greaves. "I don't need the prize, or the trophy. I only wanted to joust. Let them give it to someone else, when I don't come forward to claim it."

Musichetta looks up at him sharply. "But you won it, fair enough. It's yours by rights."

The smile he gives her is lopsided and a little sad. "I don't need a tournament official to tell me I'm good. I know I am, I only wanted the chance to do it, for once. It wasn't ever about the prize."

Musichetta frowns, her fingers tightening around the straps of the vambrace in her lap. "You earned it," she protests. It feels important. This is something he wanted, something he worked hard for, and while he may discount it, it still feels like it would be a disservice, to be able to ride and joust like any knight, like he wanted, but not to be able to be recognized for it the way that any other knight would be. "Can't you send someone in your stead?"

He just smiles at her and shakes his head, and says, "We'll see," in a way that sounds like it means, _Of course not,_ and she leaves it at that. Who is she to tell a prince what he should or shouldn't do?

When the armor is clean and the announcement of the winners draws near, Bossuet stands and looks over all the pieces laid out before them, glinting a little in the lamplight within the tent. "It is truly lovely work," he says softly. And then, glancing at her, "Will you help me back into it? If Lesgles is seen visiting Bossuet's tent, then people really will speculate."

She nods, voiceless, and rises to her feet to begin the task. She's slower at it than a squire would be, but there's no rush. She's methodical about it and this time, in a way she hadn't been the last time she'd helped him into his armor, she's all too aware of the myriad ways that doing so requires her to touch him.

It feels like putting layers of disguise over him, but also like taking them off. He stands more at ease in his armor than he did in just his gambeson, despite the weight of it. When he's got everything but his helm on, and that tucked beneath his arm, he catches Musichetta by the arm before she can step away, and moves into her space instead, moves in close and lays a hand on her cheek. The metal is already warm from the heat of him, and his touch is infinitely gentle. She shuts her eyes when he leans in, and meets him, and sighs into the kiss. 

When they part, he keeps her close and leans his brow against hers, and Musichetta wishes selfishly, pointlessly, that they could stay just like that, with the tent around them and the lamp light warm and golden and Bossuet looking so glad and so much more like himself than he ever did outside of the armor.

She could ask him to and maybe he would, for a time. But she won't ask that of him, so when he straightens she makes herself smile at him, and takes the helm from him so she can put it on him herself. She leans in and presses a kiss to the brow of the helm, then steps back from him completely and turns so she won't have to watch him leave.

She can hear it all the same, the sounds of the armor shifting against itself as he walks in it, the whisper of the tent flap as it opens and falls shut again. She allows a few moments before she leaves, too, to allay suspicion, and then she goes off to find Joly and to make her way to the jousting field with him, because even if he's not going to accept the prize he's earned, she wants to be there to hear his name called, to hear him declared the rightful champion.

Musichetta and Joly cheer loudest of anyone when Bossuet is proclaimed the winner of the jousting. She hopes he's somewhere nearby at least, hopes he can hear the clamor of everyone cheering for him. No one else at the tourney might have any idea who he is, but he's won many of them over by virtue of his performance on the field. They're the loudest cheering, but they're far from the only ones.

And then Joly stops cheering abruptly and grabs onto Musichetta's arm, and for a terrible moment she thinks he's hurt himself, that the strength in his leg has finally given out from the exertion of the day, even if it's lasted hours more with the brace than it ordinarily would have with his cane. But he isn't grimacing and doesn't seem pained, he seems rapt. " _Look_ ," he says, and she follows the direction of his gaze and her voice abruptly dies in her throat.

Bossuet is there, dressed in his full armor and striding out onto the field, towards the announcer like he means to claim his prize after all. He comes up to stand with the other knights who have secured victories in the other categories, and bows when he's offered the small gold statue that is his rightful prize. He steps forward to accept it, but before reaching out for it, he reaches up and pulls his helm off first, and stands there before everyone, for all to see.

Musichetta's voice is dry in her throat, and Joly's fingers are wrapped so tight around her arm that she's not sure if it's to keep him on his feet, or her on hers. She can't look at him to find out because Lesgles is standing there in the middle of the jousting field, inclining his head as the stunned announcer hands over the trophy, and Musichetta couldn't look away even if the sky were falling down onto their heads. Around them, the crowd has gone silent with shock, and the whole world seems to have gone still.

Beside her, Joly draws a breath, and then sends up a cheer that slices through the silence and sets the world into motion again. At once, his cry is taken up by those around them and it builds until it becomes a roar, the people cheering the valor of their prince even louder than they did for the unknown country knight.

He stands before it all with the trophy in his hands like he's forgotten all about it, and he looks stunned. Musichetta wants, intensely, to go to him, to clamber over the barrier holding the spectators back and cross the field and wrap him in her arms and tell him that he's earned every last bit of it. Maybe she could have if he were Bossuet, but he's Lesgles now, and she wouldn't be allowed within a stone's throw of him.

Joly's hand on her arm slips around her back instead and he leans in against her side, head on her shoulder, holding onto her. She holds onto him in turn, and as the clamor around them grows and builds on itself until it's deafening, they stand in the middle of it clasping one another close, and they're the only two who are silent.

*

There is a shape standing in the doorway of her workshop, the figure of a man, but this time the sun is coming in from the side and she can see him clearly, can see the uncertainty in his eyes and the smile that is trying to break across his face, and she stands there with her hammer forgotten in her hand and a piece of steel cooling on the anvil, and she stares at him and can't bring herself to move, and can't quite remember how to breathe.

"May I come in?" he asks quietly, and looks like he's waiting for her answer before he does so. Like he doesn't have any idea that he'd always be welcome.

She steps back at once, and lays her hammer down on the anvil, and wipes her hands on the leather of her apron. "Of course," she says. "Please come in. Did you-- Did you need something?"

He steps in at her invitation and glances briefly sidelong at her, and there's maybe a little hurt there, or censure, and she could curse herself a hundred times for a fool. But he doesn't say anything about it, he just steps past her and walks a circuit around her workshop, taking in the forge and the tools and the racks on the wall to store her materials, all her hard work of the past few weeks.

When his circuit brings him back around to her, he stops just in front of her, and he smiles, and it's slow and warm and brightens his whole face up, and makes Musichetta's heart lodge in her throat. "I'd heard you'd moved. It's a lovely space." His eyes glimmer a little with humor. "Your old workshop was cozier, I think. But it's lovely."

"You couldn't even walk from one end of it to the other without Joly and me sitting on boxes to get out of your way," she protests automatically, and then hears again what he said and she rears back, blinking at him rapidly. "You'd heard I moved my workshop? How?" The thought of it being a topic of discussion at all, much less in the sorts of circles that would cause the prince of the realm to hear it, is a dizzying prospect.

But Bossuet just looks at her, and after a moment lifts one brow, like the answer should be obvious. "Of course people are talking about you. There are some days it seems you're all anyone is talking about, these past few weeks." He steps past her, over to her workbench and a pauldron that's sitting there, half finished. He runs his thumb along the line of the engraving that she's been experimenting with and then looks back at her, smiling. "But you must have known that."

" _You're_ all anyone has been talking about," she says, another protest. "The whole city's abuzz with what you did."

"What we did." He comes back to her, to stand just before her again, and he lifts his hands and then leaves them there hovering in the air, like he wants to reach for her but doesn't dare. "I couldn't have done it without you. Everyone knows it. It's why they're talking about you. Everyone wants to know who made the armor that let Lesgles ride to victory in the tourney, so they can have one of their own. We're creating quite the new fashion, you and I."

She chokes on a laugh and shakes her head wildly. "I made you armor, that's all. Armor's nothing without the person standing inside it."

"You made me armor," he agrees. "And you taught me how to stand and walk and move in it. You taught me how to be Bossuet, instead of just Lesgles in a new suit of armor."

She swallows hard, but her heart is still lodged tight in her throat, making it difficult to breathe and even harder to speak. "And who are you here as now?" she asks, scarcely a whisper, the best she can manage. She grips her hands tight in her apron, to give her something to hold onto. "Bossuet? Or Lesgles?" If he's come as her prince, she can be content with that. He's already done so much for her -- he's the reason her business has exploded over the past weeks, ever since half the members of the court decided that if they prince had something then they wanted it too, and descended upon her little shop in droves, asking about commissioning armor for themselves. He's the reason she moved her workshop, here to a place she never could have dreamed of affording before, closer to her new influx of customers and with enough space to work on all these new projects. He's done everything for her, more than he could possibly know, and she can be content with that, she just needs to know.

His brow furrows a little, and he makes another aborted gesture towards her, only to draw back again. "Both, of course," he says softly. "I'm always both."

She shuts her eyes, and nods, and doesn't quite know how to feel.

"Musichetta," he says, and she startles and opens her eyes because he's touching her, his hands cradling her face, his palms warm against her cheeks as his fingers curve around the back of her neck. He's looking at her and he looks so solemn and so intent, and she can't look away. "I have always been both, in every moment that we've spent together."

He looks at her like he's waiting for something, like he's willing her to understand, but she can't. She brings her hands up to cover his, to keep him there, but she can't bring herself to do anything more. "You're a prince," she says, and means it in a dozen different ways at once. "I'm just a smith."

"You are a fine craftsman, and favored by the crown, and the darling of the court. Everyone wants to be seen in your armor."

Everyone wants to be seen in armor like what the prince wore, but she doesn't say that. 

"Musichetta," he says again, softer. "It _is_ the truth. I am always Lesgles, too, even when I would like to be just Bossuet." His fingers press just a little bit harder into the back of her neck. "I can't forget who I am, any more than you can. And I know that there isn't anything I could ask of you that you wouldn't feel obliged to provide me." His voice catches, just a little. "I don't want that. I couldn't bear it." 

She thinks she's starting to get a hint of the shape of what he's trying to hint at, but it's impossible, thoroughly impractical. It makes her heart pound in her chest and her breath come too quick and too shallow. "You can't," she says, floundering for anything solid to grasp onto. "How can you? You're a prince." He doesn't like her to say it, she knows, but the truth never cares about what you like. It just is. "And I'm...wholly unsuitable."

"For Lesgles?" he asks softly. "Or Bossuet?"

She shuts her eyes and leans her brow against his chest. The warmth of him around her is like a fire on a cold morning, drawing her in, urging her to stay and bask in it. "Both, of course. Bossuet is a champion knight now, and a hero of the city. He could have any noblewoman he cared for."

She wants to take the words back almost as soon as she's said them. She thinks maybe now he'll offer her a title, and she thinks it'll break her heart to learn that he doesn't know her half so well as he ought to, by now. 

He doesn't, though, he just takes one hand from her cheek and strokes her hair with it, cradling her close. "And if he does not care for any of the noblewomen? If it is a smith he cares for best of all? What then?" His voice has gone husky and raw. "Could he have her, too?"

Bossuet, of course, would know that answer, would have already had it in the kisses the shared in his tent at the tourney. But he's the one who said he was both, always. It would be so much easier if she could tell herself she was speaking with Bossuet only right now.

When she doesn't answer after a moment, his hand stills on her hair and he bends over her a little, embracing her, and it's wonderful. And when he steps back from her it's like stepping away from the hearth and into a blizzard, shocking, disorienting, terrible. She reels there for a moment, feeling unmoored with only her own feet to support her. She watches as though from a distance, unable to make herself move or speak the way she wants to, as he takes another step back and then bows to her, a deep, courtly bow, the sort that would befit any noble lady. And when he straightens, he looks so sad, but also resolute. 

"Thank you," he says, "for everything you've done for me. If there's ever anything you might need of me, or of the crown, know that you have only to ask." And he turns for the door, and walks through it.

Musichetta watches him go and knows with an unwavering certainty, the same way she knows by the roar of her forge when the fire's hot enough, and knows by the color that her steel glows when it's the right temperature to be worked -- she knows that if he leaves, she'll never see him again. He won't ask, he said as much, because he knows she couldn't ever answer him but one way. And she can't bring herself to, and he's too much the courtly knight to take her silence as anything but an answer in its own right, and she's so stupid, she's so, so stupid.

All at once she can move again, she's back in herself and she can breathe and move and everything hurts. And she darts outside, through her workshop doorway to the street outside and she stares after him. He's halfway down the block, walking away from her, his head hanging down and his shoulders a little hunched.

She calls after him, calls very deliberately, "Lesgles," and watches as he stills, as he straightens. She's walking towards him even before he turns, and when he does and she can see the hope on his face, bright as dawn spilling across the horizon, she breaks into a run.

He's laughing by the time she reaches him and she doesn't stop, doesn't give herself the opportunity to think or to doubt, just throws herself at him. He catches her up in his arms and she wraps hers around his neck and clings to him tightly. And when he sets her down so he can look at her, the question already forming in his eyes, she doesn't let him ask it. She takes his face between her hands and asks instead, "Can I kiss you?"

The smile that breaks across his face is brilliant. It's the most beautiful thing she's ever seen. "You already know my answer," he says, and there on the street front of everybody she rises up onto her toes and kisses him. And, there on the street in front of everybody, he wraps her in his arms and kisses her back, and they don't part for long moments, and then only because he's laughing into the kiss, giddy and joyous.

She sinks down off her toes and beams up at him. "Anything I need, you said? Just how many times can I ask that of you, anyway?"

He has one hand buried deep in her hair, the other warm on the small of her back, and his eyes are dancing. "Oh, I'd say at least once for each piece of armor you made me. That seems like a fair exchange, don't you think?"

There are hundreds of individual pieces in the armor she made him. She's dizzy, delirious with happiness and terror and excitement and relief. She holds onto him to keep her steady, and tips her face up to him, and says, "In that case-- Kiss me again."

Lesgles' grin is brighter than sunlight, and he's beaming almost too much to do as she's asked of him. But only almost. And as he bends down to her and kisses her, warmly, thoroughly, as though he might be content to fulfill this request for the rest of the day or longer without ever once coming up for air, Musichetta lets herself forget about everyone around them in the street, no doubt staring and spreading whispers that will find their way to every corner of the city before nightfall, lets herself forget about the terrifying prospect of the Crown's opinion about this and about her, lets herself forget about everything but the warmth of Lesgles' mouth on hers and the steadying solidity of his hands on her waist and in her hair, and how even now, when they're kissing like the only source of air to be found is in each other, he can't quite stop grinning against her mouth, or laughing quietly between gasping breaths, and it sounds like the best kind of music.

When they finally part again, leaning in against each other and breathing hard, Lesgles tucks her in close against his side and guides her around, back towards her shop, without her having to invite him to come back with her. "May I stay a while?" he asks her, she had been about to ask if he would, so she just presses her face to his shirt and nods there, helplessly.

"Joly will be here soon," she says after a time where they've managed to do nothing more than hold on to one another. "He said he would come by this afternoon."

She means it as a warning, means it as _So we'll have to let go of one another sooner or later_. But Lesgles just smiles like that's the only thing she could have said to make this day better than it was, and says, "Good," and fits her in more securely at his side. "I'll be glad to see him again. I've missed you both."

She's missed him more than she's let herself acknowledge, these past weeks. She's thrown herself into her work and been grateful for the sudden flood of it to keep her distracted, and too busy for wistfulness. 

"In the meantime…" Lesgles props the point of his chin on the crown of her head. She can feel him grinning. "We have a business matter to discuss."

She doesn't lift her head from where she has it tucked close against him, the beat of his heart against her ear a steady, comforting rhythm. "Do we?"

Now, she can hear the grin in his voice. "Everyone knows Bossuet's armor, now. I'm going to need a new suit before the next tourney."

She laughs, delighted. " _Are_ you? I'm very busy, you know. I'm favored by the crown, and the darling of the court. My schedule's booked full. I couldn't possibly fit another in."

The grin in his voice turns to laughter, bubbling and bright beneath every word. "I'll make it worth your while." He tips her face up to his with gentle fingers beneath her chin, and kisses her softly until she sighs into his mouth. "The same bargain we struck for the first. That should suffice, don't you think?"

Musichetta hums like she's thinking about it, like it isn't a given that she'll make him anything he'd like, of course. "I could make you some mail, too." She thinks of the thousands of links that would go into such a piece, thousands of pieces with a kiss traded for each. "That would be worth my while, I think."

"Then we have a deal," Lesgles pronounces, and bends over her again and seals it with a deposit, another kiss laid carefully upon her lips.

Musichetta curls her hands around the back of his neck and holds him there when he would retreat, and claims another half dozen for her own, and doesn't let him go until Joly walks through the door of her workshop, and seems them there wrapped up in one another, and at once starts laughing at them both.

Musichetta reaches a hand out to him and draws him down with them both, and the gladness and joy between them all fills her workshop, as bright as a fire, as warm as her forge. 


End file.
